Sports of The Times; Free-Agent Shoppers Dwindling

By HARVEY ARATON

Published: December 4, 2001

BARRY BONDS and Jason Giambi hit 111 home runs between them during the 2001 major league baseball season. They drove in 257 runs, pounding pitchers on opposite ends of the Bay Bridge, Bonds in San Francisco and Giambi in Oakland. At the plate, they were the best their respective leagues had to offer. They are charismatic stars, major box-office draws.

Yet a couple of weeks into the free-agent season, you can count the combined known bidders for their services on one hand, and that includes the Giants and the A's. Scott Boras, the agent for Bonds, the man who hit 73 home runs, is said to be working feverishly to find even one deep-pocket suitor like the Mets or the Braves or even the Yomiuri Giants for the San Francisco Giants to bid against. Giambi has the Yankees panting and possibly no one else, not even the A's, willing to guarantee at least $100 million for the slugger with the .477 on-base percentage.

Baseball players and their new friends in Congress can scream from now to forever about contraction. They can accuse and obstruct the owners every which way they can. They also have to face the grim reality that there are 30 teams operating without the constraints of a salary cap, and the superstar free-agent market so far sounds like George Steinbrenner crying for mommy to bring him his new toy.

This is a system, Donald Fehr of the players association contends, that is working just fine.

The past few years, we have often heard Steinbrenner say he was determined not to distort baseball's free-agent market. He had nothing good to say about Tom Hicks, the Rangers' owner, when Hicks gave Alex Rodriguez $252 million. This concern for baseball's financial health sounded noble and nice, especially in the weeks after another Yankees parade in the Canyon of Heroes. Now, as he moves toward the birth of his own television network with the Yankees as the only real attraction, Steinbrenner wants Giambi for Christmas and another big bat for Hanukkah and maybe a pitcher for Kwanzaa. All bets on fiscal responsibility are off.

There used to be at least a couple of teams that would bid against the Yankees. The Orioles almost lifted David Cone from under their noses a few years back. The Red Sox were in the Bernie Williams chase until the end. Now there is just resignation that the Yankees will go unimpeded doing what they do, and if the big-ticket stars like Clemens and Mussina and Giambi want to win before it's too late, then there is only one place for them to go.

The Diamondbacks got to Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series, which, for many, justified Jerry Colangelo's end run around taxpayers for the Bank One Ballpark and his massive payroll buildup. Now Colangelo, the Phoenix sports impresario, goes back to his investors with his hand out for more. For the opportunity of a lifetime, beating the Yankees in 21st-century baseball, his microwave miracle may yet devolve into the Florida Marlins, swimming pool and all.

With regards to the likes of Bonds and Giambi, most of major league baseball has long since competitively surrendered, and even the midmarket teams which haven't know how crazy it is for them to pay anyone, even Babe Ruth's reincarnation, $20 million a year.

Giambi has been the leader of a young, talented and pitching-rich Oakland team that lost successive thrilling five-game playoff series to the Yankees, who are now trying to bring him up to the majors, or at least the part of it with virtually guaranteed World Series money. Good for them, their fans, old-fashioned free enterprise and maybe for the A's and their resourceful general manager, Billy Beane, too.

Based on the Seattle Mariners' model, Beane would be better off spending the $91 million Giambi rejected on an assortment of players less talented but more useful in keeping his team from being too dependent on the continued production and good health of one man. Most general managers would pay to see Bonds or Giambi play. They just can't pay to have Bonds or Giambi play for them.

There is nothing righteous about the baseball labor movement anymore, as there was in Marvin Miller's time. The owners, conversely, deserve little civic sympathy and no public subsidies. They do have a right to pursue a business that is more competitively legitimate. The shrinking free-agent market for players like Bonds and Giambi tells us that contraction is the watchword these days at baseball's bottom, and at the top.